SEE YOU IN COURT: Colorado 501(c)4 Sues IRS Over Unlawful Disclosure of Tax Information

The Citizen Awareness Project (CAP), a Colorado non-profit that was organized to promote conservative policy and help lawmakers and communities implement those policy solutions was one of 31 groups whose confidential IRS records were furnished to the left wing attack group ProPublica. It has been nearly a year since this scandal was uncovered, and there have still been no answers, no accountability, and no assurances that conservative non-profit groups are receiving fair treatment at the IRS. Now CAP is about to do something about it.

While the group is asking for damages of $1,000 per occurrence of an unauthorized person seeing its confidential tax records, John Zakhem, who is representing CAP in this case, said that an important part of this suit is to shine some light onto this contemptible behavior through the discovery process, and get some real answers about who was calling the shots – answers that neither Congress or the press could get out of the IRS for nearly a year.

Last week Zakham pulled no punches when talking with the online journal Colorado Watchdog about the chilling toll on the nation’s political discourse that this scandal has exacted. Here is what he said:

“What you have here is a Gestapo-like agency discriminating against particular groups to subjugate a political point of view.”

For their own part, CAP created a blog posting that outlined the fact pattern that ultimately led the group to file suit with the IRS last week. CAP believes that, contrary to the IRS storyline, the practice of targeting conservative groups was widespread, and not confined to the notorious Cincinnati office. The group also feels that the Obama administration has no plans on holding anyone accountable, so their hand was effectively forced by the government’s inaction. Additionally, and perhaps most astonishing, is that according to CAP, the IRS is continuing to target conservative groups to this day.